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Prius Auto-Dimming Mirror...

Is it just me or is this thing useless. Mine only works about 10% of the time. I'm sitting at the dealer now having them look at it, but perhaps it doesn't work well with tinted windows.

I offered to swap it straight up for a good old mechanical mirror.

Seriously, does your work well? In town? What about on the Interstates?

Bill
Charleston, SC

Re: Prius Auto-Dimming Mirror...

Quote:

Originally Posted by guiffb (Post 106355)

In my case, I have been pleasantly surprised with how well my auto-dimming mirror has worked. In fact, I completely forgot the Prius had this feature until I was driving at night and realized why I wasn't getting blinded by the cars behind me.

Good luck in getting this resolved.

Craig

Re: Prius Auto-Dimming Mirror...

I'm not always pleased with how it works. I think when I added window tinting it helped, not because it made the mirror's function inherently better, but because it dimmed somewhat the light beams coming through the rear window.

One Prius driver with a VERY comprehensive web site of his own (john1701a.com) tried a modification that works for him. His description is tucked into the middle of one of his blog pages, so to save you from trying to locate it, I've pasted it and a link to a pic:

That self-adjusting technology is great; however, the actual implementation of it could be a little better. I've had a few owners mention to me that they wish it would darken a touch more when close headlights hit it at night. So, today I did something about it. Understanding how it actually operates made that fairly easy. There's a light-sensor on front (the mirror side, where the homelink buttons are too) that sees vehicles approaching and responds accordingly. The brighter the lights, the darker it makes the mirror. The catch is, it needs to know how dark it is outside in the first place. Because during the day, everything is extremely bright. Darkening then is not wanted. That's where the second light-sensor comes in. It's on the back. The darker it is outside, the darker it allows the mirror to become based on the degree the other light-sensor tells it. In other words, if you cover the one on back entirely, the mirror will think it is the dead of night (totally dark). Obviously, that's too much. So I just fabricated something to the effect of sunglasses for it. I simply taped a piece of transparent blue sheet-plastic over it, without even having to remove the mirror from the windshield. That works great! From a distance, headlights at night have no effect on the mirror at all... since it is normally off then anyway. But as a vehicle gets closer, the mirror activates and automatically grows darker. And it's not passive like it used to be. That modification seems to force the electrochromic reaction to be more aggressive. So the headlights turn a funky greenish-yellow, rather than the subtle change like in the past. It's pretty sweet! I highly recommend all owners with that type of mirror give it a try. Here's a photo showing the modification... photo album 80

The photo link mostly has non-related pics; scroll to the bottom for the relevant one.

Re: Prius Auto-Dimming Mirror...

Mine seems to work just fine! No problems here. Though, I do have my windows tinted (all 5!!) very dark for several reasons, not the least of which is to of course block out the light.

Re: Prius Auto-Dimming Mirror...

JimboK that is very useful info. LOL now I know why my TCH mirror auto dims so well! I've a parking pass that hangs from the rear view mirror, blocking most of the light that would normally hit that sensor. I also have tinted windows, and was pleased the auto dimming mirror still worked after the tinting.